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Over the years, I have made the trek to Page Mill Road in Menlo Park with over 50 startups looking for venture money to start or grow their businesses. This is the area where most of the high tech venture capitalists reside and these are the companies that are willing to take serious risks in startups. In this one region alone, they have over $150 billion in funds to invest in mostly tech related companies. And they have one interesting secret. They want the companies they invest in to be close by. That is why when a Sand Hill Road VC invests in a company, they almost always have it settle in Silicon Valley. While many companies start with angel funds or their own money, if they want to grow, they almost always need serious capital. And these VCs basically rule the Valley. They fuel the entrepreneurial spirit in this region, and since tech is their universe, they literally breed tech start ups and nurture them here in the area. The WSJ had a great piece recently that showed how VCs are rushing to invest in high tech start ups these days and underlines the VC's role in Silicon Valley.

3. It has engineering talent.

I am convinced that I get smarter just by hanging around with the brilliant engineers that work at the many companies that I deal with in the Valley. It is estimated that there are about 100,000 engineers in the Bay Area, which has a population of around 8 million. Although this number represents a cross breed of engineering disciplines, the majority are in software programming and semiconductor and hardware design. This wealth of technical talent is one of the Valley's biggest draws for established companies and tech start-ups who continue to look for the brightest talent they can find to fuel their growth.

4. Its people have a desire to change the world

One of the more interesting things I noticed when I started covering tech 30 years ago was the rather idealistic idea that technology could change the world. This theme started inside Apple when Jobs and Woz first started the company and picked up steam during the time Apple was building the Mac. In fact, when Steve Jobs interviewed former Pepsi CEO John Sculley for the CEO job at Apple, he asked "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?"

Over the years, I have heard this sentiment mentioned often when I talk with a new start up or even an established company who believes their technology has the ability to impact people in a significant way. And to some degree, they have a point. Look at the various new ways computers and now tablets are impacting the field of medicine. Or Facebook's affect on the current uprising on the Middle East. To underscore this theme, the Google executive who helped spur the recent revolution in Egypt, Wael Ghonim, was in Silicon Valley last week, and he implored his co-workers to "change the world with their next invention."

These tech entrepreneur's who drive much of the Valley's tech status forward all seem to have this "change the world" mentality as part of their DNA. That is why many of them, who are billionaires and millionaires and who could retire and sail the world, continue to work crazy long hours and keep pushing themselves and their teams to create the next great thing. Of course, they always have the motive of money, but consider Steve Jobs. He earns $1 a year. Yes, he gets stock, but if you know Jobs, he would still be doing what he is doing with Apple even if the stock was taken from him. He really believes what he is doing is world-changing.

Silicon Valley was first known for test equipment, thanks to HP, and then it became the center of the semiconductor world, thanks to Intel, AMD, and others. Apple and HP are key forces driving the future of the PC and CE devices. And most recently, it has become the center of the mobile world, as well as the nerve center for much of the activity in social media. I am convinced that as long as intellectual property sits at the heart of Silicon Valley and as long as it can continue tap into this wealth of engineering talent and still posses the money to fuel new companies wanting to change the world, Silicon Valley will continue to reinvent itself and thrive well into the future.

Tim Bajarin is one of the leading analysts working in the technology industry today. He is president of Creative Strategies (www.creativestrategies.com), a research company that produces strategy research reports for 50 to 60 companies annuallya roster that includes semiconductor and PC companies, as well as those in telecommunications, consumer electronics, and media. Customers have included AMD, Apple, Dell, HP, Intel, and Microsoft, among many others. You can e-mail him directly attim@creativestrategies.com.

Tim Bajarin is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts, and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Mr. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since 1981 and has served as a consultant to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba, and numerous others. Mr. Bajarin is known as a concise, futuristic analyst, credited with predicting the desktop publishing revolution three years before it...
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